You
are talking about the most solipsistic people on god's green earth;
they will summon back [the] drones covering dull events like civil wars and
economic collapses to defend against this assault on the hive.

...and expanded further:

What I do know is that severe weather events panic the news media,
because panic sells. When severe weather panics the news media in
Shreveport or Walla Walla, only the local residents hear about it,
because it's only local news media.

When severe weather panics
the news media in the NYC-DC axis, the whole world has to hear about it,
because that's where the world's news media dwells.

(Of course, it's not necessarily fair to say that only the locals will hear about it. If there's godawful weather to be found anywhere in the U.S., NBC will generally make Al Roker go stand out in it for the amusement of Today show viewers.)

I was watching teewee with my wife last night, she had some channel called HLN on. The woman was one of those melodramatic overly-intense types, to the point that I thought it was a parody at first. She was describing the unprecedented horror of the situation in NYC as if someone had nuked the city. After several minutes of hearing me rip her silly hyperbole and disrespect the awkward way the guy-in-the-wind misused the English language, my wife hinted that I could STFU and go read a book or something.

Al Roker died peacefully in bed two years ago, but before he died he set up a foundation to license his image and voice. What we are seeing is his computer-generated image and voice, chroma-keyed over whatever weather disaster is de jour.

It's actually a great deal for the network and Al's beneficiaries. The network doesn't have to pay first class travel and lodging to said hell-hole, but Al's foundation still gets his day rate AND his per-diem ("walking-around money") for each appearance - it's a SAG-AFTRA rule.

Down here in Florida we are wondering just why a category 1 storm that is far away is getting as much if not more coverage than a category 2 storm would if it were headed strait at us.

I am also wondering how this storm can be such a "perfect storm" complete with graphic and it's own dramatic music composed for the local news by... whoever writes those damn things... when it didn't even get past a cat 1. ??? We don't really even PREPARE for a cat 1 other than throwing the pool deck furniture into the pool (to keep it from blowing away) and making sure that the cat is outside (relax, just kidding).

In other news, the effective isolation of New York city from the rest of the world has left officials and the news media with a severe shortage of superlatives.

NYC goes through a massive supply of extreme language to generate the amount of hyperbole needed by the news media, and they blew through their strategic reserves before Sandy made landfall. Now that their usual shipments have been cut off, they're at a loss to communicate the dread and horror appropriate to the event.

Highlighting the severe shortage, Mayor Bloomberg appeared before the media this morning with what appeared to be a plea to try to ship in more superlative language; however, all he was able to say was "Buh buh BUH ba ba buhbuh BUH bababa buh buh..."

If the shortage continues, New Yorkers and the outside world may never know just how alarmed and panicked they should have been.

O.K., complete capitulation. You were right and I was wrong. We dodged a bullet when the storm picked up speed, thirty-something MPH travel speed instead of eight or nine, and the shoreline took a whuppin, maybe a fourth of the state w/out power, but so what, compared to our typical winter storm.

Now I can't see anything on the TV except wet NYC subways and New Jersey's one and only flooded trailer park.

Compared to the Connecticut River Floods back in '55 and the hurricane of '38, both of which truly gutted the state and destroyed incredible amounts of people and property, this was a complete noshow, important only because it can be seen by the naked eye from Rockefeller Plaza.

Jeez, Katie Couric's knickers must be in a complete knot. And her sister, Matt Lauer, must be totally beside himself.

I had to watch BBC news this morning to see if anything had happened anywhere else in the world.

After applying the 95% B.S. correction for socialist intent, I've discovered that the Arabs are still killing sach other, the North Africans and Somalis are still a threat to western shipping, and Russia is still run by a thug.

Your tweet is dead on. Joplin is pretty much rebuilding itself, as did Cedar Rapids, Iowa after it was flooded (there are photos of downtown buildings with water lines at 10 feet) and Parkersburg, Iowa that was also destroyed by a tornado. Tho' Joplin suffered far more property damage and death. Find Roy Huntington's (ed. of American Handgunner) articles about the Joplin tornado. He lives just outside of town. Larry Weeks

Come on, people, have a heart. Aside from electing their favorite (Democratic and/or liberal agenda) icons, they live for the buck: the resume. And hurricanes are the critical time to get air time and face shots for that all important Christmas bonus.

If they can play up the storm, they win, win, win. They keep the supervisor and union rep happy, they get the travel and air time bonuses, and air time credits for Christmas bonus and annual raise review.

Who needs an ignorant, money grubbing yahoo standing out in the wind, telling us how dangerous and damaging it all is? The next Jackass movie hasn't even started casting, yet.

GVI, if you didn't win the Internet for the day, you at least came very close second. Joplin, Mississippi after the double-whammy of Katrina and Rita, Grand Forks, New England after last year's hurricanes . . . Yeah. Local and state effort for the most part.

Joplin, Mississippi after the double-whammy of Katrina and Rita, Grand Forks, New England after last year's hurricanes . . . Yeah. Local and state effort for the most part.Which is the way it's supposed to be. Uncle Sugar's job is primarily to coordinate people and resources from outside the area, and to pour in money as needed. Actual FEMA-owned and operated resources are largely mobile command posts.

Anyway, remember the Christmas Tsunami of 2004? Thailand got hit, but not nearly as bad as Sumatera. Yet the bulk of the video footage we saw was waves crashing through streets and hotel lobbies in Phuket. The reason? Phuket is a major vacation spot for Euros, including plenty of journalists. They were already onsite, so sent what they had rather than worry about bunches of smelly brown people in a slightly different part of the world.

Another thing that Tsunami did for me was increase my respect for the old film Jaws. I used to scoff at the idiot mayor who wanted to suppress news of the shark because it would hurt the tourist trade. Stupid. Nobody, not even a scumsucking politician would do something like that. Then it turned out that the Thai government had warning of the tsunami but neglected to broadcast anything because... yup. Bad fro the tourist trade.

When Trashville got nailed with what was called a "thousand-year flood", the media presence was pretty much the subsiding chirping of drowning crickets. I, for one, preferred that: if folks forgot we existed, we didn't get overrun by assholes telling us how they did it back (or up) home, & we could get on with our recovery without pausing to resist the temptation to just shoot the smug bastards & dump them in the river with the rest of the refuse.--Tennessee Budd